This invention pertains to industrial animal traps, and more particularly, to devices for killing rodents and other animal pests.
In the farming, harvesting, and storing of food grains, it has been estimated that as much as 30% of the food products are lost to rodents (rats, mice, etc.) whether the food be in the field, in a silo, or in transportation. The worldwide loss due to rodent consumption has been estimated to run into billions of dollars.
In the past, control of rodents and other animal pests have been usually confined to chemical pesticides. Chemical pesticides, however, are not usually effective to efficiently eliminate and dispose of large numbers of rodents without contaminating or otherwise adversely effecting the soil, atmosphere, and other areas of the environment.
Spring-loaded animal traps and other mechanical devices for entrapping and killing rodents and other animal pests have been known for centuries. Typifying these traps are those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 114,062; 214,013; 363,554; 813,333; 829,960; 857,879; 1,002,082; 1,120,114; 1,436,272; 2,061,123; 2,273,008; 2,531,568; 4,145,834; 4,154,016; 4,238,903; 4,253,264; and 4,255,891 and German Patent No. 532,206. These traps have met with varying degrees of success.
Many of these prior art traps, however, suffer from the disadvantage that large numbers of rodents cannot be killed since the traps must be manually reset after each kill. Furthermore, many of these traps are complex, cumbersome, bulky, and ineffective.
It is therefore desirable to provide an improved animal trap which overcomes most, if not all, of the above problems.